Global Frig Door

Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life.

Today we watched a live Read Now webcast by Nick Cannon and Taylor Swift. It was sponsored by Scholastic in celebration of their 90th anniversary. It is part of their global literacy campaign.
At the end, they invited us to enter the reading sweepstakes.
They were more excited about the poster of Taylor Swift than the free books, but excitement is good. They can enter once per day until November 26th. They will need a parent’s e-mail address, but they can enter my email address jsigler@cjr1.org if they don’t have their own e-mail address.

The whole purpose is to get kids excited about reading. Time to get started!

Week 10 Spelling Words

Weekly Update

Here is what we did last week.

Reading: Making Connections was our comprehension strategy for the week. Students learned how make Text-to-Self connections in which they connect something they read to something in their own lives. They learned that something they read reminding them of something else they had read was a Text-to-Text connection. They make Text-to-World connections when they find something they know about the world in what they read.

Writing: Students are learning to organize their writing using a “4 Square” graphic organizer. Next week we will begin taking the ideas off the graphic organizer and put them into paragraphs.

Science: We took our Unit Test on Plants

Social Studies: We have begun studying maps, especially of Missouri. We have learned the continents through our “Continents March” and the 50 states through the “Nifty Fifty United States” song. We learned the two major rivers in Missouri and the states bordering Missouri.

Math: We finished Unit 2 about extending addition and subtraction. We started Unit 3 about Measurement. We learned why we have standard measurements and how people measured things before they had standard measures.

Week 9 Spelling Words

You will find our lists of spelling words this year on the Spelling List page.  You can learn our Week 9 spelling words at

You can also play a game to practice the words.  You can even take a test.

This is Week 9 for our spelling words.  They are:

1. discover
2. disagree
3. disappear
4. hopeless
5. helpless
6. weightless

Weekly Update

Actually this is a two week update since, I didn’t post an update last week.

Commuication Arts

Reading:  We have started reading in leveled Guided Reading Groups (We call them Book Clubs).  The groups read books that are on their level.  Last week we worked on Fix-up strategies to help them with figuring out new words they come to.  This week we focused on reading comprehension strategies:  Making Connections, Ask Questions, Visualize, Predict/Infer, Determine Importance, Synthesize/Summarize.  Each strategy has a job that they do in their Reading Response Journal.

Writing:  We are proofreading our “All About Me” 5-paragraph essays and displaying them on our lockers.  We have started collecting writing ideas in our “Seeds” writing notebooks.  We have also been doing some journal writing in our “Try It” writing notebooks.

Spelling:  You have been seeing the words for each week posted here.  After we record the scores from the spelling tests in our Student Data Folders, we will bring the tests home.

Math

All of out 1st Quarter objectives are in Unit 1, so we have already taken our Quarter one final assessment.  We are just finishing unit 2 about adding and subtracting whole numbers.  We have learned to extend basic + & – facts to larger numbers.  We also learned ways to apply the steps of problem solving to math story problems.  The kinds of stories we learned to solve were Part-and-Total Number Stories with two or more addends, Change Number Stories, Comparison Number Stories.  We learned how to add and subtract large numbers using Partial-Sum, Trades-first, and Adding-up Algorithms.  We’ll review and take the Unit 2 test next week.

Life cycle

Science

We are wrapping up our Plants Kit.  Our Wisconsin Fast Plants have almost finished going through their complete life cycle.  We will soon review and take our final test

over the unit.

Social Studies

We alternate between Science and Social Studies and we have only had time for Social Studies so far.  We will start doing Social Studies 2nd Quarter after we finish our Plants kit.

Electronics Day Friday

We have been keeping track of compliments the class earns through good behavior, both individually and as a class.  We just reached our 25 point goal today.  They voted for an “Electronics Day” party.  Friday, after we finish some of our work Friday, we will have an electronics Show-and-Tell.  Then they will be able to play with their electronic device they brought.

I told them that I am not comfortable with them bringing really expensive electronic devices like X-Box, Wii, etc. to school since them could possibly be stolen (not likely, but still possible).  That is up to your best judgment, since you bought it.  Hand-held devices are fine.

If you have questions, just e-mail me.

Week 8 Spelling Words

Week 7 Spelling Words

October Snack Calendar

This is our snack calendar for October.  We will have a snack with our snack milk each day. We will take turns bringing snacks for the whole class. We currently have 26 students in the class. You may send snacks early if you like. If you forget to send snack to school on your day, please send the next day. We will then have your snack on the day someone else forgets theirs.  If you cannot view the calendar below, you can follow this link.